


One Pure Honest Moment

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Tactile Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-08
Updated: 2013-07-08
Packaged: 2017-12-18 03:28:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/875092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With only days to live with cybercrosis, Tailgate finds he doesn't want to die a virgin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Pure Honest Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dellessa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dellessa/gifts).



“So….yeah.”  Tailgate tapped his index fingers together, trying to distract himself from the mortifying silence that crashed around them after his confession.  He could feel Cyclonus’s optics on him, weighing him down. If he could pluck the words back out of the air, he could, and stuff them back down his vocalizer.  “You’re, uh, you’re not going to hit me again, are you?”  Just wanted to be ready, this time. Just in case. 

Cyclonus gave a sour sound, folding his arms, turning to stare out the small viewport in their hab suite.  “Me,” he said, eventually. “Why me?”

“Because you’re….” Tailgate hesitated.  Not because he didn’t have an answer, but because there were too many answers, all of them right and none of them perfect.

“I’m….what? A Decepticon?” The helm didn’t move, didn’t turn away from the window.

“No. I mean, because you’re, well,” he scrambled for something to say, something to break the taut strings of tension.  “Because you remember.  You know.”

“The Ark.” 

“Yeah.”  Tailgate hunched on his berth. Why had he thought this would be a good idea?  Especially with his track record of Terrible Life Decisions. “The war, this thing they all talk about. I mean, I don’t, I’m not one of them.” The war to him was just a bunch of stories they told him, half of them unbelievable.  

“And neither am I,” Cyclonus said, turning his helm, one optic glinting over his shoulder. 

“Yes. No. I mean…,”  Tailgate spread his palms, helpless. “it’s just that, you know, I’ve never done, uh, it before.” Ratchet had told him that it was terminal and he should, you know, start planning for the end.  It was probably kind of dumb that this is the only thing he’d thought of: how terrible it would be to die a virgin.  And how he wanted to feel it...while he could still feel, before the cybercrosis numbed his systems, shutting him down stage by stage.

“It.  At all.”  Disbelieving. Which really didn’t help the whole ‘humiliating’ factor.

Tailgate shook his head. “It’s not like w-waste disposal was a high status job,” he said, miserably.  He could see the crescent of Cyclonus’s scowl under the shadow of his cheek.  And that admission felt raw: Cyclonus was only one of two who knew that.  Everyone else bought the lie about the Primal Vanguard, the kickboxing, the metaphysical studies….all of it. Because, well, why would they question it?  They all had dossiers themselves, and it seemed to make him fit in, you know? Just enough to be one of them, to be able to get away with a knowing nod at a war story, and a little shrug to demur telling his own. 

He drew his knees up to his chassis, spindly limbs, stripped for weight. Not a warrior’s legs, at all and not much to hide behind, but he tried. “I’m sorry. This whole thing was a mistake.” Everything, including waking up, back under the Mitteous Plateau. 

“A mistake.”  Unreadable but unhappy. 

“Let’s face it. Back on Cybertron, you know, before? Someone  like you wouldn’t even have looked twice at me.”  Or once.  Waste disposal mechs were pretty much bottom of the social chain.  He’d been racing across the Plateau to the Ark, just on the hope of one day being able to brag that he’d touched the Ark, the real, actual, honest-to-Primus Ark.  Maybe even seen Nova Prime from a distance. 

“I’m looking at you now.” Cyclonus turned, arms still over his chassis, optics glowing from under his helm’s heavy rim.

“It’s a figure of speech,” Tailgate said, glumly. Figures, he couldn’t even apologize right.  Idiot. His self-repair protocol had been right to call him that.

“I am aware of figures of speech,” Cyclonus said, stiffly.

Right. Educated and all that.  While all Tailgate had to show for his life was an encyclopedic knowledge of sixteen different basal structures of filtration and recycling systems and hazmat disposal and containment plans. Which was obsolete, anyway, after a few million years of interstellar war. Oh, and lies. He also had a whole pile of those, of the mech he wished he was.  

Cyclonus gave that huff, the one he did when he thought Tailgate was being especially dense, and Tailgate felt a clawed hand on his shoulder, pushing him back onto the berth. 

“I…what?”  Cyclonus was, wow, bigger than he remembered, all looming over him like this and everything. 

“Stop talking.” A curt order, but, well, probably for the best.  Every time Tailgate used his vocalizer, he just made everything worse. 

He tried to relax, but it was kind of hard, the way Cyclonus’s clawed hands skated down his shoulders, thumbs dipping to the insides of his elbows, then up.  The other’s face was a mask, tight and impossible to read, with only the optics flicking down to show any response. Tailgate felt his electromagnetic systems shift, electrons building a low fuzz around him.  He wanted to touch, the broad purple shoulders, the hard-set frown, even the broken armor horn. Was it rough? Jagged?  Did it hurt to touch? 

Cyclonus gave another huffing sigh, taking one of Tailgate’s small, white hands and plopping it, almost unceremoniously, on his rib strut.  Oh, well, guess that was a hint? Tailgate blinked, and slid his hand, cautiously, up the other’s frame, feeling the old burnish of the armor, sleek and heavy, and the powerful throb of the engine underneath. A flight frame, too, of the old kind, heavy and solid, not sleek and light. 

He could feel the weight on him, now, pressing him into the berth’s cool metal, the narrow hips slipping between his thighs, angling them apart.  Tailgate didn’t know what to do, not really. Just a bunch of things he’d seen on holovids, and they never quite got this part right, the way his entire body seemed alive and electric, vibrations singing down both arms, something that felt sweet and wonderful and at the same time whetted a kind of appetite, a swirling sort of emptiness in his belly. 

Cyclonus lowered his head, tucking his conical helm next to Tailgate’s flat, squarish one, pressing his weight against the smaller mech, covering him almost like a blanket or a shroud.

Not a shroud. Don’t think like that, Tailgate.  He still had a few days left and suddenly it seemed like a waste of precious time to spend it in regret. Not when Cyclonus began to hum, his baritone voice sending a shiver of music and desire through Tailgate’s smaller frame. 

He didn’t know the song. He didn’t know many songs, really, just the popular party themes that had been around in his working days.  This was something different, the melody stately and mournful, the syllables muffled and indistinct, like trying to see through a fog. 

It was beautiful, whatever it was, and the notes thrummed through him, stirring him awake in all those deeper places, as if every joint, every wire, was alive, singing back the song in a kind of silent counterpoint.  Tailgate found himself twisting, under the other’s body, pressing up, hands clutching all the more desperately to the purple frame, as though grabbing for life itself.  His spark throbbed, so hard it hurt, leaving him almost breathless.

It built, the song swirling around him, through him, a kind of urgency building in him, rushing through him, like a flood seeking release, fed by the careful touches, fine points of contact from Cyclonus's claws, over his body, the slide of thigh against thigh, the electromagnetic field between them bubbling and strong.

A keen poured out of him, high and sweet, one pure, honest note that matched the mood of Cyclonus’s song, fear and desire and the agonizing edge of life, sharp as a scalpel come together, like a sob and a defiant cry rolled into one. 

The purple arms tightened around him, almost crushing his squat blue chassis against the purple, fierce and powerful, clinging to him, to the strange, sad ecstasy as it poured out of him.  It was beautiful and it was awful, everything he’d wanted and everything he’d miss, one real, genuine moment in his life, where the lies were stripped away, where class and history didn’t matter, and he just was, and it was enough.

 His body was old, he was old, and yet, he’d missed out on so much. Not the war, not the violence, not the things he’d thought he had to lie about to be one of them, to matter, to count, but this.  He hated that he’d missed out on this, that he would only have this one moment, this one crystalline shard that seemed to cut through everything else, that mantle of lies and embarrassment he wrapped around himself. 

He was dying, and he could feel it, even as the ecstasy faded, like a flash of light fading, and shadows rushing in.

Tailgate squirmed away from Cyclonus, the other’s arms slow to release him, and he curled on his side, staring almost unseeing out the porthole, where the stars peered in, ancient beyond him and impassive, older than he was, older than Cyclonus, and it seemed old beyond caring.  He felt young and immature in front of them all, despite his body’s age.  It wasn't fair. None of this was fair, and he wanted to rail about it, to protest, but it would be a tantrum, after all, a childish fit about having life stolen from him like a toy.  The others had earned their peace and happiness and he? He'd lied his way into it. It was a wonder Cyclonus dealt with him at all, Cyclonus, who burned like one of the stars with his fierce conviction.  Tailgate felt like a faltering flame next to both of them. 

And he felt the silence and the sudden weight of expectation, struggling for something to say. “…pretty song,” he said, lamely, wincing to himself. 

A soft ‘hmph’ behind him, then a strange pause, and then, “I sang it to myself, endlessly, in the Dead Universe.” A shift of metal behind him, and then a purple arm draped over Tailgate’s shoulder. “It is the song of a warrior’s vision, who sees the beauty of the world the morning before battle. A thing he should always see, but he hasn’t, until then, when he stands on the edge of losing it.”

Tailgate gave a soft sound, almost a bleat, at the description, his hands clinging to the purple claw over his shoulder. “M-maybe one day, you can sing it on Cybertron again.”

Another grunt behind him, and he could feel the press of the helm against his again, and the broken horn pressing into his helm’s crown, his clawed hand tightening on Tailgate’s. “I will. In memory.”   


End file.
